It’s the tendency to see the US as a paragon of modernity, and thus as the example to be followed, when more often than not US urban planning is the way it is due to structural racism, the hierarchy of whiteness/non-whiteness and the fact that a sizeable part of the population is descended from enslaved African trafficking victims and a significant proportion of the rest rationalise them as being outside of their circle of empathy (as if they weren’t, the question of guilt and reparations would come up).
So America gets white flight to defensible car-centric suburbs, motorways rammed through inner cities, no public healthcare, and public services such as transport and schooling being stigmatised in the way that begging is elsewhere. The UK, Australia, New Zealand and Canada see this, think “this must be the future, we’d better hurry up so we don’t get left behind!” and dismantle their tramways privatise their water and healthcare systems, and build more American-style suburbs so people can live like they’re in their favourite US sitcom, and not grey-capped factory workers from Red Vienna or somewhere.
White flight can’t explain why suburbs suck today compared to the ones from 70 years ago (when racism and white flight was arguably much more common). Car-centric planning was driven by auto makers and overzealous urban planners obsessed with the idea of highly specialized single-purpose zoning (think SimCity / Factorio nerd) rather than livable, walkable communities. The most desirable and expensive places to live in Toronto are illegal to build because of these boneheaded zoning laws.
Sure it does. Suburban planning has ALWAYS been a shitty type of plan, but it takes scale to make it obvious to even the dumbest of fools. After all, a tiny suburb near some local stores is just a walkable town with more asphalt/cement.
No, a ton LESS asphalt and cement because it’s got narrow, 1-way streets (think less than half the width of a standard suburb 2-way street), no driveways and narrow sidewalks. It also has mixed housing (some single family, some duplex, some multiplex) and sometimes even has houses placed behind the ones near the street, with a shared walkway allowing access to the back.
The problem of suburbia is that it’s very low density, isolated from the rest of the city (so you have to drive just to get groceries), far from public transit, and unsafe for children to walk to school. Streetcar suburbs have none of these issues. They’re:
high density because houses sit on narrow lots much closer together and very close to the sidewalk, with only a tiny front yard for gardening or planting trees
much smaller and embedded within the fabric of the city, with a straight grid of alternating 1 way streets that have cars parked on them, heavily discouraging through traffic while keeping houses very close to small businesses
close to public transit (just walk a few mins to the end of the street and catch a streetcar or go down the steps to the subway platform)
have small bars, cafes, restaurants, shops, and grocery stores within a few minutes walk for anyone to get groceries or relax without needing a car
much safer for children due to the slow, narrow, 1-way streets and the total absence of driveways (which are very dangerous to small children who aren’t cautious enough around cars backing out)
also much safer due to the closeness of front doors to the sidewalk. Bad actors can’t grab kids without being seen or make a quick getaway due to the slowness of the street
I only spoke about what would’ve made their ineffective designs less obvious until you have enough suburban sprawl that even the dummies would agree it’s less efficient. Nowhere would I ever claim suburbia is identical to a properly designed walkable town.
It’s an artifact from the Cold War. The Soviets put money into the military and so did America but the Soviets added bodies and machines with their spending. America’s military used the money to fund far out ideas.
But that also gave America the impression that far out thinking was the norm. The extra lengths Americans went to embrace their dreams meant things cost more but it was okay because they lived in an era of abundance. But that time has passed and the cost of that older lifestyle is no longer sustainable. We’re witnessing the shrinking of Anglosphere prosperity as it mirrors America. When each country hits bottom they will be forced to adopt more cost effective urban planning with transit to suit folks who don’t own cars. It’s just a matter of time.
It’s worse than us simply becoming poorer. It’s that these places - sprawling low density suburbs - where never financially sustainable to begin with. They never brought in enough tax revenue to remotely cover the expense of maintaining all their infrastructure. There’s just too few people per square mile to pay for it all at the property tax rates people can afford. We’ve only kept things going this long through a few mechanisms:
Letting older suburban infrastructure decay to well past its replacement state.
Relying on growth to prop things up. (Build new neighborhoods and require developers to repave streets and replace/upgrade utility infrastructure in an area.)
Relying on ever higher levels of debt.
It isn’t financially sustainable. It was never financially sustainable. As long as a town can keep growing, they can keep the Ponzi scheme going for a time. But eventually you hit a wall on that and the whole house of cards collapses.
I would say it predates the Cold War. The industrial revolution started in England, and then the US ran with it. The UK built the first ship with a steam engine, the US built the first ship to sail across the Atlantic under steam power, and that’s basically been the pattern for the last 200 years. Humphrey Davy describes electromagnetism, Edison and Tesla build industrial scale power grids. England gave us Alan Turing, and in America you get IBM, Intel, Texas Instruments, Nvidia, AMD, Microsoft, Apple and Google.
While “the anglosphere” as this thread terms it has been inventing everything from antibiotics to thermonuclear weapons to the T-shirt, what have the rest of you been up to?
If it weren’t for “The anglosphere” the rest of you would still be dying of smallpox by candle light.
That and a frontier-era individualism, now pressed into the service of standing against socialism. If you live in a single-family home and only get around in your private car, other people don’t look like comrades or fellow citizens so much as traffic and competition. As cars cost money, they’re also a good emblem of material success.
And, of course, those uncomfortable with seeing those people as their fellow citizens no longer need to share subway carriages or tenement corridors with them.
It’s the tendency to see the US as a paragon of modernity, and thus as the example to be followed, when more often than not US urban planning is the way it is due to structural racism, the hierarchy of whiteness/non-whiteness and the fact that a sizeable part of the population is descended from enslaved African trafficking victims and a significant proportion of the rest rationalise them as being outside of their circle of empathy (as if they weren’t, the question of guilt and reparations would come up).
So America gets white flight to defensible car-centric suburbs, motorways rammed through inner cities, no public healthcare, and public services such as transport and schooling being stigmatised in the way that begging is elsewhere. The UK, Australia, New Zealand and Canada see this, think “this must be the future, we’d better hurry up so we don’t get left behind!” and dismantle their tramways privatise their water and healthcare systems, and build more American-style suburbs so people can live like they’re in their favourite US sitcom, and not grey-capped factory workers from Red Vienna or somewhere.
White flight can’t explain why suburbs suck today compared to the ones from 70 years ago (when racism and white flight was arguably much more common). Car-centric planning was driven by auto makers and overzealous urban planners obsessed with the idea of highly specialized single-purpose zoning (think SimCity / Factorio nerd) rather than livable, walkable communities. The most desirable and expensive places to live in Toronto are illegal to build because of these boneheaded zoning laws.
Sure it does. Suburban planning has ALWAYS been a shitty type of plan, but it takes scale to make it obvious to even the dumbest of fools. After all, a tiny suburb near some local stores is just a walkable town with more asphalt/cement.
No, a ton LESS asphalt and cement because it’s got narrow, 1-way streets (think less than half the width of a standard suburb 2-way street), no driveways and narrow sidewalks. It also has mixed housing (some single family, some duplex, some multiplex) and sometimes even has houses placed behind the ones near the street, with a shared walkway allowing access to the back.
The problem of suburbia is that it’s very low density, isolated from the rest of the city (so you have to drive just to get groceries), far from public transit, and unsafe for children to walk to school. Streetcar suburbs have none of these issues. They’re:
I only spoke about what would’ve made their ineffective designs less obvious until you have enough suburban sprawl that even the dummies would agree it’s less efficient. Nowhere would I ever claim suburbia is identical to a properly designed walkable town.
It’s an artifact from the Cold War. The Soviets put money into the military and so did America but the Soviets added bodies and machines with their spending. America’s military used the money to fund far out ideas.
But that also gave America the impression that far out thinking was the norm. The extra lengths Americans went to embrace their dreams meant things cost more but it was okay because they lived in an era of abundance. But that time has passed and the cost of that older lifestyle is no longer sustainable. We’re witnessing the shrinking of Anglosphere prosperity as it mirrors America. When each country hits bottom they will be forced to adopt more cost effective urban planning with transit to suit folks who don’t own cars. It’s just a matter of time.
It’s worse than us simply becoming poorer. It’s that these places - sprawling low density suburbs - where never financially sustainable to begin with. They never brought in enough tax revenue to remotely cover the expense of maintaining all their infrastructure. There’s just too few people per square mile to pay for it all at the property tax rates people can afford. We’ve only kept things going this long through a few mechanisms:
Letting older suburban infrastructure decay to well past its replacement state.
Relying on growth to prop things up. (Build new neighborhoods and require developers to repave streets and replace/upgrade utility infrastructure in an area.)
Relying on ever higher levels of debt.
It isn’t financially sustainable. It was never financially sustainable. As long as a town can keep growing, they can keep the Ponzi scheme going for a time. But eventually you hit a wall on that and the whole house of cards collapses.
I would say it predates the Cold War. The industrial revolution started in England, and then the US ran with it. The UK built the first ship with a steam engine, the US built the first ship to sail across the Atlantic under steam power, and that’s basically been the pattern for the last 200 years. Humphrey Davy describes electromagnetism, Edison and Tesla build industrial scale power grids. England gave us Alan Turing, and in America you get IBM, Intel, Texas Instruments, Nvidia, AMD, Microsoft, Apple and Google.
While “the anglosphere” as this thread terms it has been inventing everything from antibiotics to thermonuclear weapons to the T-shirt, what have the rest of you been up to?
If it weren’t for “The anglosphere” the rest of you would still be dying of smallpox by candle light.
That and a frontier-era individualism, now pressed into the service of standing against socialism. If you live in a single-family home and only get around in your private car, other people don’t look like comrades or fellow citizens so much as traffic and competition. As cars cost money, they’re also a good emblem of material success.
And, of course, those uncomfortable with seeing those people as their fellow citizens no longer need to share subway carriages or tenement corridors with them.